Just a few weeks ago I wrote a blog about our love of baseball and how we must appreciate the game for what it is, and then as we were all waiting for Opening Day it happened, THE BRAVES TRADED CRAIG KIMBRELL!!! Just as the Braves had finally started to get us to buy into their plans during the offseason, they do this to us!! Or at least that’s what a lot of text messages from friends of mine read. After the trade was announced, my phone blew up with text messages of “I’m done with the Braves!!!”, “The 2016 season can’t get here fast enough!!” and a few other texts that were worded in a familiar fashion.
Now, I can’t say that I wasn’t shocked by the revelation that the Braves had just traded our all-time leading closer, but the second part of my ESPN notification was the one part that surprised me the most. Not only had the Braves just traded Kimbrell but we were able to get someone to take on Upton’s contract? “They must mean like 50% of the contract.” I said to myself. “Nope says they’re paying the whole thing.” “Wow”, I thought. “I guess the only bad news is for them to take Upton, we had to trade Kimbrell and we get nothing back in return. Wait, what does that say? We got their number one prospect and a Top 50 draft pick?” By this point I had almost forgot that we had traded Kimbrell but then I got a phone call. “Man why did we just trade away Kimbrell, the heck with the Braves!!! I won’t watch them all year!!” my friend on the other end of the phone said. In response I replied, “Man, I know it sucks giving up Kimbrell but Melvin or BJ or whatever his name is now was traded too and we got prospects in return, that was a pretty slick trade on our part.” The response on the other end of the phone wasn’t a lot of positive answers but in all honesty all of Braves nation was still in shock over one of our beloved players being ripped away from us one day before we were to start a new season, one in which we were having to convince ourselves to think positive about in the first place. After a night of turmoil it was finally Opening Day for the Braves. We had just lost Kimbrell the day before but the season goes on and we have to at least see what this new team looks like. Well, the first game had turned into a 2-1 nail biter through the first eight innings, but we had learned one thing so far, this was a scrappy team and they seemed like they were going to fight until the last pitch was thrown. As all good storylines go though, it figures that the main drama from the day before would be put to the test on Opening Day, as the Braves had to call on new closer Jason Grilli, the man that was forced to take the spot of Kimbrell. As he took to the mound most of Braves’ nation was unsure of who this guy was, but he had actually been a pretty good closer for the Pirates just a few years ago, and was no stranger to this situation. As he fanned through the three batters the Marlins sent up, including their star right fielder Giancarlo Stanton, all of Braves nation took a giant sigh of relief, “Maybe we’ll be okay even without Kimbrell.” Then came Tuesday as the Braves were able to win 12-2 and then Wednesday where our new star pitcher from the Cardinals Shelby Miller was able to shutout the Marlins 2-0. The Braves are now sitting at 3-0 with a two game lead on the “predicted World Series champions” Washington Nationals and going into their opening home series against the NY Mets. While the sting of the Kimbrell trade was tough, just like the Heyward one before it was, we all still tuned into the game because it’s what we do in the South during the summers, we watch and pull for the Braves. It’s that history and connection that still brought us back and will continue to bring us back every year. Well, I’m getting a text, I guess I should probably end this blog now……hey it’s my friend from earlier, and he just wanted to say “Our Braves are 3-0!!! When are we heading to Atlanta for a game?”
0 Comments
Every year as spring starts to hit in Spartanburg, I always start to get excited about the beginning of baseball season being just around the corner. No matter what the Braves have done in the offseason the kid inside of me still wants to believe that this will be the year that they bring home the next World Series Championship. We all want to say that we’re tired of baseball, that the game needs to be changed, etc, etc, but once spring comes back around, baseball comes right along with it and we welcome it like an old friend we haven’t seen all winter. There is just something about baseball that we can never turn our back on it, it’s like a link to our past that we just never want to let go of. I was reminded of this fact the other day when I took in a baseball game at the Inman Mills Park, a game between SCA and Chester High School. With no real rooting bias towards either school, I was able to just stand there and take in the pageantry of the game. If you have never been to Inman Mills Park, it was a stadium built for the Inman Mills baseball team to play in during the old Industrial Leagues. Its current configuration dates back to around 1948 and includes covered concrete stands, dugouts, an old school scoreboard (the type where you still have to hang the scores) and its most unique feature, an outfield fence that borders a cow pasture. Yep, that’s what I said, its outfield fence borders a cow pasture. In fact Travis, who was at the game with me, commented “I hope those cows don’t take offense to all those cow-skinned baseballs being hit into their pasture.” While the comment was funny, the idea of a baseball field being next to a cow pasture is something that no design architect would recommend when building a new baseball park these days, and that is a fact that I hate. While the game was going on you could see the cows wandering in the pasture but as the sun began to go down you could only see a silhouette of the cows in the last bit of sunlight on top of the hill, like they were trying to take in the last little bit of the game themselves. I then began to think about how much I miss taking in a Spartanburg Phillies game at Duncan Park. I know there is a stadium in Greenville that we can go and watch games at, and it is a really nice modern stadium, but there is just something I miss about being able to see a game at Duncan Park. I can remember as a kid sitting in the general admission seats along the third baseline rooting on the Spartanburg Phillies like they were a big league team, and I guess as a kid to me they were. I can still remember getting to throw out the first pitch on my sixth birthday and getting the autograph of a young up-and-coming catching prospect of the Phillies, some kid named Mike Lieberthal, who ended up starting for the Philadelphia Phillies for twelve years and was a two-time MLB All-Star. It was a tradition in Spartanburg for people to make a trip out to Duncan Park at least once a summer and take in the history of the stadium and watch some good young prospects play their hearts out for our local team. Duncan Park never had the nicest facilities or the most modern technology but what it did have were stories. It was a place where a dad could take his son and tell him stories of games he had once saw there when he was a kid, sitting in the exact same stadium. When it comes to baseball we all seem to debate on ideas of how we should fix it or not but the one thing that we can all agree on is that it’s the history that always draws us back to the game. When thinking about baseball I am often reminded of the line from Field of Dreams, “This game is a part of our past Ray, it reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again.” While we move into more modern and fancier stadiums, we must remember and not forget it’s the history and ambiance of these older stadiums that still bring us back. Anyone want to go catch a game? |
JamesBoiling Springs native, lover of sports and food. 15x SC Press Association Award Winner. I do some sports writing and radio every now and then. Archives
April 2020
Categories |